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[Full title: History and Structure of Svacchanda Tantra; (2) Methods of Textual Criticism ]

Works carefully composed by known authors in documented circumstances, naturally permit a systematic textual and contextual interpretation not available for collective and anonymous texts. In order to compensate for this absence of textual cohesion and supplementary biographical and sectarian data, anonymous compilations must be critically analyzed both internally and comparatively. Once this analysis has identified individual textual components and thus furnished a context for interpretation, the particular process of their historical compilation can be studied to provide insight into the systematic significance of the text. Provisionally, three interrelated stages of this analysis can be distinguished: first, literary criticism, or the hypothetical identification of written documents used to compile the text; second, tradition criticism, or the examination of the traditions underlying the text and its sources; and third, redaction criticism,

22 or the study of the processes by which documentary sources and traditions have been woven together to produce successive versions of the extant text. This analysis may assume that in constructing a text like Svacchanda tantram, compilers not only have drawn on written documents, or sources, but also have used various tradition-complexes or residual collections of material of varying ages which had been handed down partly orally, and partly in written form. These traditions that form the context, i.e., the direct or mediated background accompanying the constructing and reworking of the text, may be identified as its underlying strata. 1 Redaction criticism may assume, as well, that for anonymous Sanskrit sectarian literature the composition, transmission, and recitation of texts do not fall into distinct phases but overlap and intermingle. 2 Thus, the extant text of Svacchandatantram resulted not only from successive but also from interdependent activities of compilation, redaction, interpolation, revision or normalizing correction, emendation, and commentary. Accordingly, in place of a single author or editor, stands a Saiva tradition, composed of generations of teachers, ascetics, officiating ritualists, meditative practitioners, commentators, initiated patrons, and scribes. This literary, tradition, and redaction criticism serve as primary methods for the internal analysis of a single text. For comparative analysis, many model studies already exist, which provide examples of the methods to be employed when examining 1 For this terminology, adopted here with modifications, v. R.E. Clements, "Pentateuchal Problems," in Tradition and Interpretation, ed. G.W. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), esp., pp. 96-97. 2 On the overlapping of these processes, and the intermixture of oral and written tradition in the purani, cf. Giorgio Bonazzoli, "Composition, Transmission and Recitation of the Puranas," Purana 25, 2 (July 1983): 254-280, and esp., 279.

23 multiples versions of, for example, cosmological sections, found in many texts. 1 By reconstructing the historical context and ideological basis for the agreements and differences among versions, this comparative criticism of anonyomous Sanskrit literature has been able to generate, at least in outline, doctrinal or sectarian history. 2 Material from Svacchandatantram has already been extensively cited in the study of certain Saiva rituals. 3 Even without a specific interest in applying the comparative method for historical purposes, cross-referencing and accumulation of common material remain prerequisites for understanding any particular Saiva scripture, especially in its ritual descriptions that are often at once, technical, stereotyped, laconic, and obscure. And the traditional commentators themselves, such as Kshemaraja, have pursued and relied on this type of comparative explanation. Both the non-systematic explicative use of comparative data, and the methods of systematic historical and comparative analysis can be applied, without alteration, to comparable sections of the 1 For the programmatic account of this comparative historical method, v. Paul Hacker, "Zur Methode der geschichtlichen Erforschung der anonymen Sanskritliteratur des Hinduismus," in Paul Hacker Kleine Schriften, hrsg. Lambert Schmithausen, Glasenapp-Stiftung 15 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1978), pp. 8-17. For a paradigmatic application, v. Klaus Ruping, Amrtamanthana und Kurma-Avatara, Schriftenreihe des Sudasien-Instituts der Universitat Heidelberg (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1970). 2 Hacker, "Zur Methode der geschichtlichen Erforschung der anonymen Sanskritliteratur des Hinduismus," p.14: "Und da direkte historische Zeugnisse meist fehlen, ist die Textgeschichte bez., allgemeiner gesprochen, die Methode der Vergleichs der Mehrfachuberlieferungen, oft sogar das einzige wissenschaftliche Erkenntnismittel fur die geschichtlichen Vorgange." 3 V. Helene Brunner-Lachaux, trans., Somasambhupaddhati, troisieme partie, Publications de l'institut francais d'indologie .25, 3 (Pondichery: Institut francais d'indologie, 1977).

24 Saiva scriptures. However, when applied to the ritual and meditative portions of these texts, instead of, for example, to their cosmological sections, these methods require prior reflection on their limitations and presuppositions. Ideally, by assuming the abstract existence, as it were, of any particular ritual or meditation independent of its actual performance, traditional or contemporary exegetes can readily complement and fill out an incomplete description of a ritual in a particular text by references to other texts more fully describing the same ritual. Going even further, they might distinguish correct or better descriptions from wrong or inadequate accounts. And later commentators and writers of paddhatih, or handbooks, undoubtedly operated, with theological or sectarian motivation, under this prima facie assumption. Without this essentialist assumption of an "Ur-ritual," an exegete confronts a thicket of variation whose growth must be carefully examined on a case by case basis. Saiva ritualists undoubtedly evolved, practiced, refined, revised, and transmitted their practices in diverse temporal and regional circumstances. Perhaps a pattern of attempted standardization or homogenization followed by subsequent differentiation repeated itself before the era of widespread literary diffusion promoted efforts to codify a canon and canonical rituals. The great number of overlapping, or seemingly redundant initiation procedures given by a text like Svacchandatantram suggests a complicated development of rituals in both pre-literary and literary contexts. Even under the best conditions, detailed comparision with extant sources may be mistaken and yield only provisional results as long as potentially vital Vorlage remain as yet unedited or irretrievably lost. Since paraphrase and stereotyped phrasing rather than citation characterize these texts, attributions of priority, even in the case of seemingly parallel passages or descriptions, become difficult, even before considering the additional complication of a third common source. And even apparently

25 clear-cut cases of borrowing may instead conceal a secondary convergence through the retouche of redactors. A complete analysis of variants of a ritual through comparative analysis that sorts them according to a schema that associates different lineages of ritual practitioners with specific texts and regions would be an exaggeration and simplification. In fact, the model of contaminated manuscript transmission probably reflects the historical development of these rituals as much as the conservative unilinear model suggested by Vedic traditions. Therefore, a partially independent tradition criticism not generated by the application of textual comparison alone, must accompany and serve as a corrective to the results of the comparative or internal analysis of written sources. Thus before applying the particular procedures of comparative analysis or internal analysis to a text like Svacchandatantram, they must be reevaluated and appropriately modified. Such modifications are demanded by the application of these methods to sections of the Saiva scriptures that intrinsically differ from the material in other genera of Sanskrit literature for which these methods were developed. Intimately tied to a particular realization by performer or practitioner, a ritual or meditation practice has a nature that certainly parallels but also differs from the literary or verbal existence of any mythologeme, philosopheme, or narrative topos. Although ultimately inaccessible and thus bracketed or suspended from consideration, the inevitable effects of the subjectivity of the performer can not be discounted as a factor responsible for change and innovation in a tradition. And, at the other extreme, objective material conditions, from which purely verbal content is insulated, such as the availability of ritual substances, also affect the performance and thus the form of rituals. The modifications entailed by the particular content of a text like Svacchandatantram affect some of the working rules or principles commonly used when analyzing anonymous works of

26 Sanskrit literature. The first rule used in comparing multiple versions of a tale, or the like, is that the shorter version is the older. 1 The correlative of this principle assumes the continuous accretion of anonymous works of Sanskrit literature. Despite cogent arguments against the universal application of this principle, in the absence of counter-evidence, which is obviously often difficult to locate, criticism must exclude questions of excision and subtraction and proceed with this working rule. 2 And, as will be shown, the text of Svacchandatantram would appear to confirm this rule, by showing repeated evidence of interpolation and of the extension of earlier systerns. In some cases, however, the text qualifies descriptions as summary, and refers along with Kshemaraja to more comprehensive accounts in other books of Svacchandatantram and in other texts. 3 This suggests that compilers and redactors could freely condense and reorganize source material, and cautions against the uncritical use of this nonetheless basic principle. A second rule, or a variation on the first, indicates that the simpler version precedes the more complex. 4 In 1 This principle especially forms the basis of the critical edition of the Mahabharatam; v. Mahesh M. Mehta, The Mahabharata. A Study of the Critical Edition, Bharatiya Vidya Series 34 (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1976), pp.37 ff. 2 On the possibility of excision, v. Mehta, The Mahabharata, PP. 44 ff. 3 For the references to other texts, v. supra the discussion on the Brhattantrani; for typical cross-references, v., for example, bk.5, p.25, vs.38: sampujayet ..... purvoktena vidhanena For an example of an alternative procedure marked by the text as an abbreviated description, "samksepena藵v. bk.4, vs. 404 b, p.256. 鈥� 4 V. on the uncritical use of this principle, Rocher, The Puranas, p.102: "... I agree with the more cautious and openminded approach, that 'when a series from simple to complex is considered providing the chronological framework, a counter argument that with the passage of time, the same complex situation would get simplified also requires to be carefuly considered. ""

27 " Svacchandatantram, while many complicated rituals appear to have been built up out of simple rites, other rites appear to be secondary simplifications of more complicated procedures. 1 In some cases, technical terms forming part of a prior complex system reoccur in simpler contexts. Here only careful examination of all the evidence about the relations of the traditions, and most importantly, the possibility that these terms might have been "desystematized" and "re-contextualized, can correct a premature attribution of priority according to the rule that simpler is earlier. This caution reflects a third working rule that considers a smooth, unitary, and homogeneous treatment of a subject to be later than a traditional, digressive, less logically composed version. 2 This principle, in turn, relies on the evidence of redaction criticism, which looks for specific signs of textual reworking. Most often, anonymous texts develop through limited operations of compiling, redacting, and localized retouche. A thorough recasting characterizes the work of a later, educated milieu and the systematizing of individual authors. This principle, in turn, reflects a fourth working rule, that a version closer to a Paninian norm is later. 3 Corresponding to this 1 For an examination, in srauta ritual texts, of the construction of complex rituals through the recursive embedding of smaller rites, v. Frits Staal, "Ritual Syntax," in Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Essays in Honour of Daniel H.H. Ingalls, ed. M. Nagatomi, et al. (Dordrecht: E. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980), pp.119-142. 2 On this principles in relation to the Upanisads, v. Joachim Friedrich Sprockhoff, Samnyasa. Quellenstudien zur Askese im Hinduismus, Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes 42,1 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1976), pp.20-21. 3 V. Friedrich Otto Schrader, "The Kashmir Recension of the Bhagavadgita," in Friedrich Otto Schrader Kleine Schriften, hrsg. Joachim Friedrich Sprockhoff, Glasenapp-Stiftung 19 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983), p.182: "Experience in the field of Indian philology has yielded the rule that of two recensions of the same work the longer one is more often than not also the later one. And

28 presumed typical pattern of assimilation by more educated, or brahmanical circles, comes a fifth principle, that the pronounced sectarian version is normally the later. 1 The same sectarian motives responsible for creating a particular recension of a work, have undoubtedly stimulated sects to construct sectarian variants of particular rituals, myths, or entire genera of literature. 2 While sectarian rivalry encourages imitation and thereby innovation, sectarian identity and self-consciousness simultaneously contributes to a reverential and conservative attitude toward their own scriptures or their particular recensions. This conservatism, in turn, moulds the redactional process, favoring accumulation, accommodation, and adjustment at the price of repetition, contradiction, and disorder.